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Laying Down Woe, Onward I Go!

I am a recovering compulsive overeater, abstinent by the grace of God one more day at a time.

Today, even more than every day, circumstances require that I do what I do not wish to do in preference for what is needed. My friends are laying their daughter to rest after a devastating motor vehicle crash. I have chosen to sacrifice my plans and my much needed recovery meetings to be with these precious friends.

“We will no longer simply do what we feel like doing or what we think we can get away with.” — The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, p. 24

Feel like and want to are lying on the altar of my Abstinence, and I lay them there every morning as I utter the words, “Your will be done, Lord!” the whims of self-indulgence cannot entangle me once this has truly been done. God reminds me of it throughout my day. Rather than looking back in regret that would render me, like Lot’s wife, a bitter fossil, I find joy in discovering that God’s provision far exceeds anything I could have arranged by my own will or way.

9 In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.

This verse calls to mind a walk I took a few days ago, along a railroad track. As my feet followed my instruction to step carefully along the straight path I had planned, I found that they also moved under another force, that of the rolling rocks giving way beneath them. As I struggled to maintain forward progress, each unstable place called for careful adjustment, constant recalibration, and course correction. Were I to attempt it blindly, or force my preselected perception of forward, I would surely have ditched myself.

God has a way of rolling the turf beneath our steps to bring about His purposes. A spirit connected with His perceives this move and responds to it as a guiding force. The self-obsessed sense this as disruption, fuel for their justified frustration. I thank God for the hope of knowing that he is making me less of the latter and more of the former, as I continue to accept with serenity the movement I cannot stop.

This is even more important under the weight of the reality of verse 4, “The Lord works out everything for his own ends—even the wicked for a day of disaster.”

“Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes” Isaiah 5:18

There is a lot of bad news for Israel in these two chapters, and it translates to all who reject “the Holy One of Israel” to pursue their own lusts and desires. This particular woe seemed to describe the relationship my disease promoted between my cravings and me.